


Two Mad Mages

by brightephemera



Series: No Identification Provided [5]
Category: Planescape: Torment
Genre: BURRRRNING, Body Horror, Burning, Burns, Fire, Gen, Insanity, Sigil (City), Smoldering Corpse Tavern, burrning, burrrning, i checked and yes he was this crazy, let's meet the new guy, mmburrrrrnsssss, questionable allies, this was too cool a questline to ignore just because it's a monumentally bad idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 19:49:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20533619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightephemera/pseuds/brightephemera
Summary: Nameless recruits a powerful new ally. "Ally" isn't really the optimal word.





	Two Mad Mages

**Author's Note:**

> cw body horror, violence, gore, extreme burns.
> 
> Dialogue has been transcribed from game in parts. Some descriptions, particularly about fire and noise, have been paraphrased.

“No,” said Annah.

Nameless stalked through the Clerks’ Ward. Even the most direct route to the Hive was taking too long.

“No,” said Annah. She reached out and touched the decanter in his hand. He slapped her hand back.

“Are yeh even _listening_,” said Annah.

Nameless grasped the decanter in both hands. “Very closely.”

“Tell me when yeh mean tae do something with it,” growled Annah. “Succubus, talk to him.”

“You’re playing a risky game,” said Fall-From-Grace. “I fear this challenge you’re seeking, that you feel cannot be accomplished with the friends you’ve already made.”

Nameless rounded on her. “You know the challenge.” A night hag of unknown power, locked away only by the strength of the Lady. And people within Sigil who would kill him for what he was, for what his prior incarnation had done. “You know, and I have to do this.”

Fall-From-Grace looked patient. “Are we insufficient? Think carefully. I see loyalty surrounding you. And I see you ready to damage it – for what? Someone who can help you kill more thoroughly?”

“You don’t even know what I’m doing.”

“Using a decanter of endless water on something in the Smoldering Corpse,” Dak’kon said flatly.

“Could be the chit who wouldn’t pay her tab, but I don’t think watering her would help,” said Morte.

“You do not _know_ him,” Dak’kon said quietly. “Your understanding is flawed. Thus your plan is flawed. Thus your results must be flawed.”

Dak’kon, who followed him into every folly. “I don’t have time to become sure of this! I don’t have time.”

“A lifetime and more,” Fall-From-Grace said softly.

Nameless shook his head, hard. “Imagine facing the night hag with a power she can’t whisk away. Imagine opening doors that no fiend and no human – not even me – can get ready access to. Imagine closing doors we can’t cleanly close alone. This is perfect.”

“Everyone says he was barmy before they caught him in there,” said Annah. “And that does make yeh a natural fit, but it willna help yeh with what’s needful.”

He remembered to keep walking. “This isn’t a vote.”

“It should be,” Annah muttered darkly.

They pushed with the crowd toward the Smoldering Corpse. It crouched in the Hive like a toad and it fed well on the variety of the streets. Indoors some magic must be at work just to contain the smell, for between grills in the broad front room hung a thing that had been a man, roasting. It twisted slowly in a column of flame. Any watcher could see the flesh melting and dripping from its emaciated frame, but over time it grew no thinner and the flames were never damped. More than a score of hedge wizards and academics had joined forces to punish this repeat arsonist by trapping him in a conduit to the Elemental Plane of Fire. From looking at the blackened lips it was hard to tell whether he objected to the treatment.

The Nameless One headed for the bar, where the owner eyed him with no great affection. “Barkis,” said Nameless. “I suggest you clear the common room.”

“What, are you dropping off some other body part you don’t want anyone to see?” He glared at Nameless’s ragged pants. “I’m not buying, Scars. You can be on your way.”

“I really think you should clear the common room. I’ve come to recruit.”

“The gith was a paying customer and you took him. What is it now?” Barkis caught his look. “Oh, you can’t be serious.”

Nameless eyed the flaming mage once more, then returned to Barkis. “I need him more than you do.”

“He’s evil, and not the kind that profits.”

“The damned are a specialty of mine.” For a moment he tried to imagine he wasn’t referring to himself. “Sorry, were you thinking of stopping me?”

Barkis stared up into Nameless’s eyes. “No,” he said slowly. “Ladies, gentlebeings, the bar is closed. Pay up and go.”

About half the patrons did, grumbling all the while. The waif Drusilla stayed by the door; it was hard to tell whether she had heard. Two black Abishai never even paused their ponderous conversation. Barkis stood like he was propping up the tavern by sheer stubbornness.

It couldn’t be done in privacy, then, but it had to be done. Nameless weighed the decanter of endless water in his hand. It seemed like a precious thing to be using up all at once. But he needed someone to give the powers of the planes pause, and the arsonist before him might suit.

“Everyone,” he said. “You can wait outside.”

“Don’t tell me twice,” chirped Annah, and darted out.

Dak’kon and Fall-From-Grace looked at him. It was easier not to meet their eyes.

“Look, when you step in the stupid, I have to be there,” said Morte. “So do it.”

Nameless uncapped the decanter. He tossed a sparkling arc of water into the column of fire where the burning man hung.

A pop, a hiss, a roar. Steam flared from the impact. Nameless twisted the decanter and kept pouring. The water snaked around the column of fire and squeezed, almost invisible now in the searing white cloud. When the scream started Nameless’s hand faltered. The decanter arced to shatter in the grill. The roar of fire and the shriek of something no longer human rose together, battering Nameless’s ears. He felt blood running down moment by moment. The world was steam, and pain, and howling. He turned to flee.

Silence. It seemed like a new concept. He gingerly touched his ears. They were bloody but he could hear his fingers rub together. The steam was clearing, the other survivors in the bar recovering. Fall-From-Grace was lowering her wings from the shield she’d made for herself and Dak’kon. The column of flame over the grill had contracted to a ragged halo around the floating creature. The creature looked at him with eyes flickering like two torches.

As he had seen before.

“I _know_ you,” said Nameless.

“Yesss,” said the creature. It spat ashes when it spoke. They lost themselves in its flaming radiance.

“Ignus.” Because these things were bound by names.

Its blackened lips cracked as they parted. “Yessss…I am yourssss… ‘til death comesss for ussss both…”

Nameless summoned to mind his night’s preparations for this new ally. He raised his hands and wrapped a cloud of water, sparkling, cool, around the wizard and his halo of flame. Ignus would not feel it – in the cloud’s hollow he would always be the flame – but even after it faded it would damp his ambient danger. There was simply no other way to walk around with him.

The Nameless One felt very tired.

Barkis came up from behind the bar. “You! You did take him, you brainless piker! You owe me…”

Nameless looked at him. Ignus, floating, crackling, _smiling_, looked at him.

“…and you can take him out of here,” said Barkis.

* * *

“Chief?” said Morte.

“Hm?” said Nameless.

“Don’t look now, but the dabus are watching.”

“They’re what?”

“And you’re looking now. Simple instructions.”

Nameless dragged his gaze away from the dabus that had stopped its work at the street corner. “What about them?”

“They’re looking. They’re all looking.”

“At us?”

“Three guesses. They remember him, chief. And I don’t think they like him.”

* * *

The sprawling, ramshackle house required a certain portal to open, and the Nameless One had roughed up enough city cutthroats to find the key.

“Remind me what we’re doing here?” grumbled Annah.

“Getting enough coin to keep a roof over our heads,” said Nameless. “Everything in here was probably stolen goods anyway.”

Dak’kon and Fall-From-Grace waited outside the door that Nameless, Annah, Morte, and Ignus intended to leave by. It was a long indoor route, but a profitable one as the two sane people with hands ransacked every barrel and box they found. Heroic it wasn’t, but Nameless needed the means for bribes. And not even Annah would complain about getting a square meal with the proceeds of their raid. Fall-From-Grace was a shrewd businesswoman but he had no intention of making himself a drain on her finances. Dak’kon could probably fast for weeks – and probably had at some point – but there was no call for that now. And Morte just really enjoyed the twin concepts of money and having a lot.

Nameless had been through more straightforward warrens than this. One or two strangers were addressed, briefly, and left in peace. As for the barriers…

Annah scoffed. “Yeh’re about to kick that door in.”

Nameless stepped up. “Yes.”

Annah rolled her eyes. She slipped something thin and shiny from her vest. It was a matter of seconds to spring the door open.

“Yeh still need me,” she said brightly.

They pressed on. Trinkets, coins, anything that might fetch a price with Hive merchants who didn’t much care where the goods came from. Nameless redistributed a few things to ill-favored residents who didn’t start hostile. Annah cleared their barriers as they went.

They reached a door that Annah could not open.

“Lady’s hangnails,” she grumbled. “Jest one more…”

After half a minute of watching. “It’s not going, Annah. Stand back.”

“Yeh’ll like as not break yer foot,” she grumbled.

She was probably right. “Ignus,” he said.

The creature floated from its vigil behind the party and eyed the lock. “Ssso flimssssy,” he rasped, and reached out to touch a fingertip to the metal.

For a few seconds it seemed like nothing was happening. Then the wood around the doorknob began to smoke.

“Good.” Nameless stepped up alongside and kicked the door open. The lock mechanism was bent.

“Faugh,” Annah said bitterly. “I coulda done it.”

“Which is why you didn’t?” Morte said sweetly.

“Pike off.”

Beyond they found a long hallway with a door at the end. By Nameless’s reckoning that would lead back out to the alley where Dak’kon and Fall-From-Grace had kept the escape route clear. Their scavenging was almost finished.

A side door halfway down opened and a man with a knife stepped out. “Oi, what in hells…hey! Intruders!”

He charged and a stream of men with larger blades followed. Nameless must have interrupted an actual meeting. Of what, he didn’t know.

“Hey!” yelled Morte, bobbling past Nameless. “Your girlfriend and your sister would be embarrassed to see you like this, but I repeat myself!”

None of their attackers – the defenders? – asked their purpose. Morte did the talking between bites. Morte bit high, Annah jabbed low, and Nameless sent magic missiles between. It worked. One by one the wounded, the dying, and the intelligently cowardly were tugged back to be replaced by more bruisers.

“Think I chipped a tooth,” called Morte. His words were never worried, even when his tone was.

This was it. Nameless had hoped to find a test of some kind, and this was the best he could have imagined. “Ignus,” he said. “Past Morte and Annah.”

The flaming halo crackled. The mad mage leaned to float beside Morte. He raised his fire-ravaged hands in a quick, expert series of motions. His technique was even better than Nameless’s.

The red fireball gripped the air itself and shot down the crammed hallway, ripping through clothing and flesh alike, leaving a trail of hungering flames. There were screams. For a half a second Nameless was back in the Smoldering Corpse feeling his ears bleed, his eyes strain against the heat.

Then he was in the ruined house, and there was a tunnel of fire between his friends and the exit. This much could be said, the men dying would not stop them.

“That’s enough,” he said to Ignus.

Ignus’s black lips stretched. He opened his hands in twin puffs of ash and described another spell. A second fireball blasted toward the far door.

“That’s _enough_,” said Nameless.

“Sssee,” said Ignus. “The heat…the flamessss…” Again he gestured.

Nameless summoned a cool shield to wrap around his forearm as he braced it across Ignus’s collarbone and shoved him to the wall. “_Stop_.”

The entity’s ruined face bubbled and ran, sometimes exposing a tooth or a cheekbone before regenerating the barest layer of flesh. This close the stench reached straight for Nameless’s stomach and twisted it in place.

Ignus snarled and flared. The heat flowed around Nameless’s arm and set his sweat running. And Ignus’s fiery eyes told him something, half lost in madness, half held in check by what passed for its deference to Nameless.

Ignus, avatar of fire, could kill him.

Nameless staggered back. The mere heat of the smoldering doorway felt like healing.

“I sssserve.” Ignus laughed, a guttural clack. The others looked on, not understanding. “Burnsss…”

Annah made a face. “Are we going, then?”

Nameless turned, not to his friends but to the hallway. He didn’t have the means of undoing Ignus’s rampage to give safe passage through. Well, he had the information he wanted. Ignus would be a potent ally. A potent something.

He looked at Morte and Annah. He wanted to prove that this damage was manageable, that the mage was under control. He wanted to comfort them, to show the trick that made everything all right. He opened his mouth. “Run.”

* * *

They made it out. In fact they got far away before the fire spread to the outer walls. If the dabus were concerned, well, they didn’t give chase.

Nameless spent an hour with Ignus trying to tease out the knowledge of the fireball without burning down the neighborhood. By the end Ignus was more or less respecting Nameless’s “stop.” The flames licking around his torso limbs never tired, and those eyes flickered without pause and without any emotion but zeal.

But the day was dimming, and everyone did have to rest. They found a kip house several neighborhoods away. Everywhere it was the same: the dabus stopped working, and turned, and watched Ignus on his way.

“Not inside,” said the owner. “He’ll scare off the whole Hive.”

“Leave him outside,” said Fall-From-Grace. “No one’s going to steal him.”

“If we’re lucky, someone will,” grumbled Annah.

Nameless left Ignus outside.

The night was quiet and the party subdued. The fire ran down until Dak’kon stifled it in one sharp stroke. They had had enough warmth.

“Now?” he said to everyone else in the room.

“Now what?” said Nameless.

Annah scoffed.

Morte cleared his jawbone. “Chief. It’s like this. I enjoy an unprovoked slaughter as much as the next skull, but–”

“Yeh’re off yer rocker,” said Annah.

And so it started. He knew they couldn’t be trusted. “You don’t understand. I have to cover my trail. And _his_ trail.” That one, that man, that old self, that sprawling blight on history.

Anna planted white-knuckled fists on her hips. “And burning a building full of people is going tae make yeh forgettable.”

“The tiefling has a point, chief, and not just the one on her tail. You’re not strictly leaving a trail, but you’re making a mark.”

“But nobody will stop us while he’s here.”

“Is that your reason?” Fall-From-Grace sounded cool. She also sounded concerned. “My friend. Are you trying to redeem your past self? Or to get revenge on it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I know I can’t change what _he_ did. Just because I will do whatever it takes to scour every horrible thing he did from history…you can _stop_ staring at me.” No one did. “If we’re going up against the night hag, against any of the local law enforcement, I need something unstoppable.”

“And yer smell wasn’t enough?” said Annah.

“Don’t make me unleash my verbal abuse,” said Morte. “I’ve been studying. Bet I can burn your ears up faster'n your new friend.”

Impossible. “Do you two take anything seriously?”

He hadn’t expected the hurt in Annah’s expression. “Don’t yeh know by now?” She stalked out.

Morte kept his attention on Nameless’s face. “Oh, you care what _she_ thinks,” he muttered.

“Of course I care. I didn’t do this to offend you.” Nameless wiped his hands down his face. He could still feel the flames. “Fine. I’ll keep a tight leash on him. He said ‘serve,’ and he meant it.” It wasn’t a good answer, but it was what he had.

That night, thoughts tumbled without order or conclusion. He needed Ignus. He needed Ignus because it was too late to turn back. No, he needed Ignus because Ignus would be a tool for good. He needed his friends because it was too late to turn back. No, he needed his friends because in some strange way each of them cared a little bit about him. He needed his friends because perhaps they could stop Ignus….

Very late he left. He couldn’t stop himself. The outdoors called to him, the twin arcs of the city above. He climbed the thorn-studded arbor wall and swung up to the roof.

Annah was there, playing a coin across her knuckles. She didn’t look at him. “I didn’t know if yeh would come. The day yeh let go the roofs…yeh’ve changed.”

He hated her hurt and hated that he had caused it just by doing what he had to. “You understand. You must understand.”

“What does that mean? I know why yeh’re doing it. I know that yeh can’t die and I know why yeh hate that berk who used tae wear yer skin. And I know yeh’re an idiot to go about it this way. The gith’d be so proud of all that knowing. Is that enough for yeh?”

He hugged his knees. He thought about her running away in this crazed city, leaving him forever, forgetting his quest and declining to forgive his offenses. Her never, ever knowing his name. He thought about it. “I didn’t know if you would come.”

Quiet, except for the murmur of crowds in other streets.

“Yeh need minding,” she said.

And then what could he give her? “I can’t put him back.”

“And yeh with the Art? Yeh could.”

“It took a city district, and the conduit has only strengthened him. I think he could kill me.”

“So could I and that donna stop yeh from pissing me off.”

“No. Permanently.”

She shot to her feet. She stared down at him. “We’ve got tae put him back. I willna let yer own stupidity be the death of yeh.”

“Sit. Please. I’ll work something out.” This wasn’t a zero sum between his friends and his…servant. He had to keep both, or else he was lost. “Annah, I’m so–”

He felt the heat even through the shield. Ignus floated at the level of the eaves.

Annah snapped her tail. “Faugh! Go away!”

“Ignus.” Nameless tried to sound calm. “What do you want?”

“Do not…ssssleep…you call.”

“I didn’t call.”

“You sssee more flamesss.” He pointed up at the inner curve of the torus that made Sigil. Fires twinkled from a hundred angles. Up until today they had always been a comfort. “Thissss domicccile will burn ssso brightly. Crisssp and fall…”

Nameless looked at Annah. Annah looked back, red in the glare of Ignus’s flaming halo. “We’re not burning tonight.”

“Flamesss…”

Nameless was bleakly glad that he had memorized a fire spell above and beyond Ignus’s uses. He summoned a little swarm of flames that coalesced around one fist. He held it out before Ignus. “Flames,” he said firmly.

Ignus leaned forward. “Yesss…”

Nameless opened his hand and the fire vanished. “We will speak of them soon.” To learn, to gain in strength, to burn the evidence and to open doors in this damned city full of them. And then to rein him in, because maybe, if Nameless’s friends really believed it, Nameless could be better than this. “Goodnight, Ignus.”

Annah stuck her tongue out at the mad mage as she and Nameless climbed down to the kip house step.

On the ground she frowned. “Good thing yeh had a showoff that got him interested without anyone else getting toasted.”

“Half true.” Stiffly he showed her his hand, red and blistered from where his exhausted mind could no longer call forth even one little shield. That was a mistake in planning he must never, ever make again.

She scowled at him. He wanted to erase her accusations, all his companions’ concerns, and he had no spell for it. Freeing Ignus was almost purely incidental to the mistake he could not undo. He had started once to apologize for it. But talk of damaged trust would only bore her, and they were both already tired.

**Author's Note:**

> Nameless brought only the chaotic characters on the supply run. 
> 
> I struggled for a long time with why I should finish Ignus's questline. It was interesting and fun, but the prize at the end is a lunatic sixth-level mage who tries to kill you if you change the subject. I left him behind on the Curst excursion. Joke's on me, I picked up a lunatic ninth-level fighter who tried to kill me when I changed the subject.
> 
> But...any port in a storm. And such a storm this is.


End file.
